Robert De Niro, who seems hellbent of late on capturing The Post’s annual Turkey Award for Worst Actor, certainly got an impressive start with his self-parodying role as a derelict taxi driver in this spring’s “Being Flynn.’’
But that was just a warm-up for the new career low that the once-great Paycheck Bob hits with his super-hammy turn as a supposedly blind celebrity mentalist in one of the most preposterous and incoherent films of 2012, Rodrigo Cortés’ “Red Lights.’’
De Niro’s Simon Silver has resumed bending spoons and curing cancer patients before huge, appreciative paying audiences after a 30-year hiatus following the mysterious death of a journalist who was preparing an exposé.
Tom (Cillian Murphy) is a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University who, along with his quasi-girlfriend Sally (Elizabeth Olsen, in a nothing part), is part of an academic team devoted to exposing paranormal quacks.
He very much wants to take on Silver when the Uri Geller-like mentalist takes his tour to Cleveland (impersonated, in this case, by Toronto and Barcelona).
But the professorial leader of the team, Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), is leery of directly taking on Silver, with whom she has a tortured past that murkily involves an adult son who’s been comatose and on life support for decades.
Weaver, in a role that inadvertently summons memories of “Ghostbusters,’’ is the only thing saving “Red Lights’’ from a zero-star rating.
She alone seems to realize it’s a cheesy entertainment at best, and introduces some much-needed levity in a film whose other participants take the hokey proceedings far too seriously.
The high point is a hilarious scene in which Margaret demolishes some “proof’’ proposed by a pompous colleague (Toby Jones) eager to confirm the existence of paranormal phenomenon to secure funding.
Unfortunately, her character isn’t around for the second half of the film, when the colleague begins putting Simon through a bout of scientifically dubious tests.
By this point, the focus has shifted to her protégé Tom, who has a series of progressively more ludicrous confrontations with Simon.
When weird things start happening to an unhinged Tom, he begins wondering whether Simon actually does have powers he’s wielding against the skeptic.
“Red Lights,’’ which had a disastrous premiere at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, gets sillier and sillier as it goes along.
Writer-director Cortés (“Buried’’) throws viewers an endless number of shock cuts before knocking them out with a curveball of a surprise ending that would shame even M. Night Shyamalan.
“How did you do this?’’ Paycheck Bob (who levitates at one point) repeatedly thunders for what seems like 10 minutes. The more apt question would be: Why?